An obituary where the author casually drops that he was the youngest receiver of this-and-that award? That everything becomes so easy with the Wolfram Language? That he's written a new kind of science book and casts Golomb's work as essentially a precursor for his great accomplishments about cellular automata?
Wolfram is slowly transforming into the Trump of computer science. Soon he'll cast turing machines as just a small precursor of himself having solved computation.
Every single article I've read by Wolfram makes detours to focus on his own accomplishments (e.g. awards or appointments), tied to the main story by extremely tenuous, almost non-existent connections. And there are always multiple references to cellular automata.
I will gladly admit I like his storytelling and the anecdotes are interesting but I have to ignore the detours to make it to the end.
> An obituary where the author casually drops that he was the youngest receiver of this-and-that award?
It's more a eulogy than an obituary. It is common in eulogies for the speaker/writer to explain how the subject's life tied in with their own.
His being the youngest winner in the first batch of MacArthur awards is completely relevant because that was why Astrid Golomb came knocking on his door.
> That everything becomes so easy with the Wolfram Language?
He gave one specific example as something that is easy nowadays on computers that Golomb had to do tediously be hand when he needed it in 1954. Nowhere does he say anything about the Wolfram Language making everything easier.
don't be so harsh on the old man. He indeed accomplished a lot. A little bit self-promotion is generally Ok. What did Steve Jobs actually do technically?
Wolfram is slowly transforming into the Trump of computer science. Soon he'll cast turing machines as just a small precursor of himself having solved computation.